Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday that he has "no interest" in running for the recently indicted Sen. Bob Menendez's seat if his presidential run is unsuccessful.
"No, I have no interest in being in the United States Senate," Christie, who's running for the 2024 GOP nomination, told NBC News' Kristen Welker on "Meet the Press."
“I had a chance to appoint myself to the United States Senate" after Sen. Frank Lautenberg died in 2013, Christie said. "If I didn’t appoint myself, the easiest way to get there, I sure as heck am not going to run for it,” he said.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor, commended the Justice Department for indicting Menendez, the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, on what he described as "horrific" allegations.
Menendez, a Democrat, and his wife were charged Friday, accused of having accepted “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in cash, gold bars and more in return for his influence to enrich three New Jersey businessmen and benefit the Egyptian government.
Numerous Democrats, including N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, have called for Menendez, who has denied any wrongdoing, to resign.
Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who has also called on Menendez to resign, said Saturday he plans to challenge him for his seat.
“Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better,” Kim wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Menendez has been defiant, and he has said he has no plans to step down. "It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere,” he said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that she also believes Menendez should resign. Asked about his discrimination claim, she said: "As a Latina, there are absolutely ways in which there is systemic bias, but I think what is here in this indictment is quite clear."
Christie appeared on "Meet the Press" shortly after NBC News released a poll that showed him lagging with Republican primary voters. Asked whom they would vote for if the primary were held today, only 4% said Christie. The poll showed him in fifth place among primary candidates, and 55 points behind the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, a Christie foe.
Christie shrugged off the poll results. “The fact is that national polls don’t matter. We don’t have a national primary,” he said.
He said that if he can beat Trump in New Hampshire, "and I plan to do so," the "sense of inevitability" around Trump "will go away."
"Momentum is everything in this race," Christie said, vowing that he'll show that after New Hampshire.
He also offered some support for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who's trying to find a consensus within his small majority to avert a government shutdown while fending off threats to his speakership from hard-line Republicans.
He's "managing a very difficult caucus under very difficult circumstances" and "doing the best he can," Christie said.
Asked whether he thinks McCarthy will survive attempts to oust him, Christie said yes and predicted he'd remain speaker through at least the 2024 election.
